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Ready, Set, Render! Part2

In the previous "Ready, Set, Render!" thread, I demonstrated the use of BPR when rendering a 'hard-surface' model. This time, I opted to demonstrate the use of Z4R2b BPR for rendering an organic surface, in particular, a skin surface. For this test, I used an excellent head sculpt created by ZBrush artist Majid Esmaeili.

About using Z4R2b in this render...
In the previous Z4 version, we introduced the capability for each shader within a material to have its own settings for shadows and ambient occlusion strength, which allows for more control over the look of a material. In Z4R2b, new global shadow and ambient occlusion multipliers have been added to the BPR renderer. This enables you to test different strengths of shadows and ambient occlusion by simply modifying these two sliders without having to visit each shader individually. In Z4R2b, there are also similar global multipliers for the Ambient, Diffuse and Specular strengths. These enable you to adjust properties globally, again, without the need to visit each shader to adjust its ambient, diffuse or specular values. These features do not introduce new capabilities to ZBrush, they are simply intended to streamline ZBrush features. However, there will be several new features that add capabilities not currently available in Z4R2. As an example, the Material mixer has a new filter added which allows the opacity of a shader to be controlled by cavity. In earlier versions of ZBrush, cavity shading was only available with MatCaps. in Z4R2b, all shaders can now utilize cavity shading. There will also be enhancements in other parts of ZBrush. ZBrush4 R2b is planned to be released before the end of the month as a free-of-charge upgrade to all registered users.

If you can't find it in yourself to be impressed with the materials and rendering capabilities of ZBrush after watching that video, then you are truly a hard-core cynic. Wonderful model by Majid Esmaeili, too.

I don't mean to be a downer in any way but is it really wise for Pixologic to focus efforts on their renderer? Maybe my perception is skewed but in feature films and broadcast I don't believe I've seen one Z-brush user use the BPR for production. It can be useful for concepting but even then it's extremely rare to non-existent to take the shaders very far. It's usually only to show basic color design.

I could see it being useful in Print for freelancers though I haven't personally tested how Z-Brush handles 5,000-10,000 pixel wide renders. The monkey is definitely impressive, all I am questioning is this what most people want to see who use Z-Brush on a regular basis? It also seems lately that to show these features, the images that make it to the top row use the BPR.